Fading Light

"Causing trouble? Don't talk nonsense. I merely brought an old friend who had lived alone for too long to reminisce about the past."

Mr. Russell tilted his head, lit a cigar, and suddenly asked, "Huai Shi, when were you happiest in the past?"

Without even thinking, Huai Shi answered, "When I was making money!"

"Ha, that was certainly straightforward."

Mr. Russell laughed at that. "Other than that? Not that fleeting peace that merely drives panic away for a while, but a time you cherished from the bottom of your heart and hated to see pass... when was that?"

Huai Shi thought for a moment, lowered his head, and looked at the instrument sealed within Amber on his wrist.

"Probably when I was playing the cello."

He sighed. "When I had just learned to play, I didn't understand anything, but I liked it instinctively.

In the music, every listener could feel content and happy, and I didn't lose anything either... Even after becoming an Ascender, though I could indulge myself without restraint, nothing could compare to that feeling anymore."

"But your life back then wasn't good."

"That's right." Huai Shi nodded.

"Even the most impoverished and difficult life has its glimmers of light, doesn't it?"

Mr. Russell smiled as he gazed at the setting sun in the distance. "Everyone has them. Shalma was no exception."

"..."

Huai Shi glanced sideways at the old man's blissful smile, as though he were looking out upon a beautiful past, and felt that the old man was seriously sick in the head. "Weren't you just trying to upset him?

"Before leaving, you even deliberately rubbed his old enemy Ying Fangzhou right in his face. However you looked at it, that was revenge!"

"There's no contradiction there, Huai Shi."

Mr. Russell turned back, looking delighted. "You